What is Digital Branding?

Do you know what Digital Branding Is?How it can help your business in 2020

Scott Cook always says that “A brand is not what you tell to your consumers, but it is what your consumers tell to other people“

In this Digital Era it is really simple for people to spread their thoughts and reach to various people. If it has become easy for the people to reach other people than it has probably become easy for businesses too.

Thus, here making a smart move many businesses are using the Digital Platforms for their Branding and Brand Communication to the consumers which is ultimately known as Digital Branding.

According to wikipedia, Digital Branding is a brand management technique that uses a combination of Internet Branding & Digital Marketing.

Now here another fancy term is tossed that is Digital Marketing, you need to understand the Difference between Digital Branding and Digital Marketing to understand what exactly digital branding is.

What is Digital Branding?

Definition : Approach of Leveraging the Digital Platforms and internet to build or manage your brand identity and making the brand communication with the audience is known as Digital Branding .

To make is more simple!

Building your brand using various Digital platforms is known as Digital Branding.

We had tossed the term Digital Marketing in previous phase along with Digital Branding.

Digital Branding and Digital Marketing are two sides of the same coin, which means they are totally Different but always co-exists.

In order to be clear what is Digital Branding, we first need to understand the difference between Digital Branding and Digital Marketing.

Let us understand the difference between both :

The main Difference between Digital Branding & Digital Marketing :

Simple thing! Marketing is what you do, Branding is what you are. Elaborating it, Digital Marketing focuses more on promoting your product or services that you provide and Digital Branding focuses on who you are and what you stand for with one similarity that is both is done via Digital Platforms.

Let’s get a little deeper into the concept :

These both are not an interchangeable terms

The end goal of Digital Marketing is to sell, while that of Digital Branding is to leave an essence of yours to the consumers.

Digital Branding focuses on values while digital marketing focuses on attracting people and selling them services or products.

Digital branding focuses on building personality and reputation while digital marketing focuses more on strategies to increase revenue.

If you attracted a person with Digital Marketing he will be your customer only, but if you show him your brand essence with Digital Branding that person will be your customer and promoter

You are still here, that’s great.

Keep it up, we are coming to the point

Let us understand the whole concept of Digital Branding.

Concept of Digital Branding

The concept of Digital Branding totally opposes to that of Digital Marketing, Digital Branding aims and works to create a connect between a business and their customers and leave the customers with an essence of the values of the business.

In short Digital Branding is not used only for the sole reason of Driving sales now-a-days.

Digital branding is used to enhance the awareness amongst the market and audience, make an image and style of the brand and use these things to bring a long term customer loyalty.

Digital Brand Establishment involves following four key points :

Building a Digital Brand Story

Creativity in Digital Media & Marketing

Digital Channels to reach consumers

Creating digital awareness and relationships

Ohh great you are still here, let’s have a look at the heart, sole, hands, legs, nose and every element of Digital Branding.

Essential Elements of Digital Branding

We know the elements of Branding or Branding Management like Brand Image, Brand Identity, Brand Personality, Brand Positioning and many more.

When it comes to Digital Branding we fails to figure out this things so let’s have a look at these.

Elements of Digital Branding :

Logo (Brand Identity)

Impact (Brand Image)

Digital Channels (Brand Positioning)

Website & Social Platforms (Brand personality)

Digital Influence (Brand equity)

Strong & Unique Content (Brand Communication & Differentiation)

Review and Analysis (Brand Extension)

Some tangible things like Brand Gap and Brand Experience might be missing in this because of some limitations of using Digital Platforms in Digital Branding.

Let us Discuss these elements one by one at a glance.

1. Logo (Brand Identity)

A brand of course is said when some bunch of people can identify it by hearing its name or seeing its logo or typography or any other element.

Digitally it boils down to the logo and colours that presents the identity of a brand. A brand logo should be clearly recognisable and should represent a particular brand.

Many people mistook that a logo should pass the message about the business, but always remember this that “A logo is meant to be recognised and not to pass a message.”

As soon as you are a Brand, your logo don’t need to tell that what your company does or provides. People know themselves that what you stands for. For example the best branded company till date ‘Apple’ don’t have any single representation of its products or services in its logo.

On the other side you can still recognise it because of its elegance, while if you are going to provide too much detailing in your logo about your services, people will fail to notice it and might cannot recognise it.

Also colours plays an important part in creating a Brand Identity. Colour of your logo should properly align with your brand identity and your work. You can get an overview ofwhich colour represents in below image.

2. Impact (Brand Image)

Weather it’s Offline Branding or Digital Branding the core purpose is always to make an impact when people look at it.

Talking about Digital Branding, what people are gonna see is visuals on social platforms, design of your website and most important thing authenticity of your digital presence.

The question is How can you make an Impact on viewers?

The answer is by showing the goodwill of your digital presence.

You can show this by embedding reviews, getting video testimonials on your website. Not only your website but people are also going to check your presence out there on other well known business directories and also on Social Media Platform.

Also if you can have your company presence on various high DA/PA websites like Wikipedia that it is even better for the brand.

And also in this thing, you need to focus on Quantity equally to the quality because wider your business is present, more your brand will be recognised.

Thus make sure that you build and maintain a goodwill across the digital platforms wherever there is your presence. It is really going to help you make an impact.

3. Understanding Audience & Analytics (Brand Positioning)

Philip Kotler defines Brand Positioning as “the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market”

In-order to occupy a distinctive place in mind of a target marketing you need to find two things.

The first obvious thing is the Target Market, because it’s there in the definition. Just joking, not because it is in the definition but it is really important to define the target market.

The second thing that you must figure out for your Brand Positioning is what distinctive characteristic you want to be there in the mind of people. This will not only be helpful in Brand Positioning but it will help you in whole Digital Branding.

Now here’s the good part, being on a Digital Platforms gives you the power of Insights and analytics tools that different provides you. A normal man can easily understand the analytics and it can help you find both of the above mentioned necessary elements for Brand Positioning.

4. Website & Social Platforms (Brand personality)

Always remember, personality has the power to uplift, power to depress, power to curse and power to bless. You digital Brand Personality totally depends on your own direct presence Digitally and that is your website and social media platforms.

Talking about your website, it’s ok to have a look from the perspective of SEO, it’s good to focus on some essential parts to get the audience in, but in that don’t forget about your business.

Let me tell you a beautiful story,

I was on holiday and to my all good luck I stayed in a 5-star resort.

That resort have a very beautiful and huge lobby.

I think it can accommodate more 10-12 rooms of good enough size in the area of lobby.

To my curiosity I asked the manager at the resort that why so much space if left empty for a lobby which almost no-one uses.

The manager replied to me that “Sir, all the people who comes to the resort for booking first come to the reception desk in lobby which creates the first impression in their mind about the personality of the resort and which is why they pay us this much high price for it.”

This teaches how important it is to show exhibits even if people are not going to use it.

Same is the story with Social media and website of your company, your consumers are never going to use your website or social media platforms but it is important to make a Digital Brand Personality to the audience.

5. Digital Influence (Brand equity)

We had heard the word “Influencer a lot” in todays digital world. Think of it, how great it would be if you will become an influencer?

Now come down, let’s get back to understanding what Influence is actually?

Influence is not about numbers, the amount of Subscribers or followers it is neither the size of your network. Influence is basically the amount of people engaging or responding according to your actions.

Being an individual is cool, but making your company a leader and influencing is some thing awesome.

The brand equity of your company in Digital Branding is defined by what kind of influence you have over how many people.

6. Strong & Unique Content (Brand Communication & Differentiation)

Brand Communication is defined as “a tool of brand management by which the companies inform, persuade, enlighten, teach, remind, and enrich the knowledge of their stakeholders about the brand, its strengths, values, fundamentals, and its offerings of products and services.”

Or making it simpler!

Brand Communication is how the brand communicate with its stake holders and showcase its values.

Don’t take the word communicate here for granted, many brands make mistake here. Brand Communication, specifically in Digital Branding is not only limited to talking but it is far more

A term “APPLE” is used as an abbreviation for Brand Communication, it means

Approach : How you approach a stranger

Probing : How you probe or Inquire your audience about their interests

Presenting : Presenting or Offering a solution to his/her problem or interests

Listening : Listening to the response and feedback to your offering.

Ending : Ending the conversation with a heartfelt and a mesmerising experience

Coming to Brand Differentiation, it is all about how you can differentiate your Brand in all the ways.

Following are some major ways that I think you can differentiate your brand while Digital Branding.

Represent your brand as an expert

Create a Mascot

Innovate

Appeal to emotions

Be relevantly shocking

Personify your product

Let us move to the final elements of Digital Branding and that is Brand Extension.

7. Brand Extension in Digital Branding

Brand Extension is basically a way to encourage new products under an already existing Brand Name to take the advantage of its brand equity.

For Ex : Nike was originally selling the shoes but after that they introduced sunglass, garments, bags and a lot more.

Talking about Brand Extension in Digital Branding, you need to first mine a niche and showcase your company as an expert of any one of your service or a market leader in any one of your product.

After that comes the interesting part, it is a lot easier to divert people from one thing to another digitally.

You can also use methods like Collaboration and affiliates for extending your brand or use someone’s else’s brand name for benefit of your own.

Hey You are a great reader man, you are still here.

Do one thing, grab a glass of water and stick at one place now because the most awaited part is finally here.

How Digital Branding can help your business in 2020?

Digital things are trending and so does Digital Branding. There are a lot of benefits which you can take and use Digital Branding to help your business become a brand in 2020.

Here are some of those proven and tried ways to help your business with Digital Branding.

1. Omni Channel :

Offline is good for things like Brand Extension, but Digital Branding is better in aspects of reaching out and channels.

Opting for Digital Branding opens a lot of digital channels to reach out to your audience and promote your brand. Social media, forums, OTTs, Website and many other options are there to work digitally and shout out your brand.

2. Virality :

When people look at your offline visuals for Branding like your hoardings, visuals, outlets, they cannot carry them away to show to other beings.

But the game is opposite with the Digital Branding. It is very easy to share anything over any digital platforms and it hardly takes 2 or 3 seconds. This increases your chances to go viral and reach as many viewers as possible.

Also many digital platforms provides paid features for promotions which are really cheap when compared with that of traditional channels of promotion.

3. Better Connection & Management :

Digital Branding gives you the power whom to connect and manage within your fist. Not only Digital Branding but every digital thing comes with this power.

Digital Branding gives you the power to finely select and target the audience perfect and most suitable for you. Along with it you will always have the advantages of insights and measurements.

4. Mobile Optimization & Flexibility :

Might some people have spectacles and cannot see your branded advertisements on road. Might someone can have so they won’t get out of their home for few days. May be there is a pandemic condition like Corona Virus.

In all this things there are chances that your branding campaign cannot reach to your estimated target audience. But everyone does have mobile phones and they are inseparable from their life.

Digital Branding gives you the advantage of Mobile Optimization which is one of the best advantage of Digital Branding.

5. Videos :

Do you had ever seen an image and cried? I guess 99% of you had not cried latest after seeing an image or a photo in their life. But had you ever seen a movie or a video and cried? This time 99% of you might had cried.

The point is Videos are more powerful to connect to the emotions of a person directly than any other medium. Videos appeal the most to the viewers and thus they feel a connect directly with your brand if you use videos.

If you talk about video, it is not possible to showcase a video with help of any digital platform. Thus videos gives you an upper hand when it comes to connecting to the people which is very essential things in Branding.

I really appreciate that you had completed reading the whole blog and if you really liked the blog and you think it added some value to your life don’t forget to share it.

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Digipple is a Innovative Digital Marketing & Creative Digital Branding Company that had redefined the game of Digital Marketing industry. We also have expertise in fields of Designing and Advertising along with Web Development